The aim of this chapter is to provide a temporal framework for the study of Greek history; it will serve as an accompaniment to the analytical and spatial frameworks that have been presented in previous chapters. We have seen how Eurocentrism has shaped the construction of the temporalities within which Greek history has been studied in the last two centuries. Chapter 5 aimed to show that the temporality that juxtaposes antiquity and modernity, or sees antiquity only through the prism of the emergence of modernity, is deeply problematic and misleading. In what follows, I explore a variety of different temporal frameworks for the study of Greek history.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF EUROCENTRIST TEMPORALITIES

The construction of Greek history as a field within a Eurocentric perspective had a double effect. On the one hand, the incorporation of Greek history within a Eurocentric metanarrative necessitated the construction of Greek history as an entity with beginning, acme and end; it needed a homogenised national narrative; on the other hand, Greek history existed as an entity only from the perspective of how it functioned as a stage in the evolution of the West.

I will deal with this second issue first. We can call this perspective the tunnel vision of time. It is the idea that there is a sort of linear trajectory in history, which moves ultimately to modernity.